CHAPTER VIII.
When he started up, late in the morning, after a short sleep, and saw the snow drifting sadly down outside the window, the face at once rose up before him again; and the frightened look of those blue eyes, that he had hoped never to see more, and that now came to begin anew their designs upon his happiness, made him shudder even more than the harsh breath of the winter morning. And yet at first he had difficulty in believing that it had really happened. It was only from his great exhaustion that he realized what a storm he had passed through.
He was surprised himself at the stolid, torpid, icy calmness with which he was able to look back on the frightful scene, as if the apparition of the night, that yesterday made his hair stand on end, had no power over him in broad daylight. He thought about the loss of his faithful old companion too, as something that had happened long ago. But he was pained by the thought that he had let the faithful animal be buried in his masquerade trappings, with the gaudy ribbons and the guitar on his back. He even went so far as to seriously deliberate whether he should not have the grave opened again and cleared of all the tawdry finery. However, he put it off until evening; and when evening came he had much more pressing matters to attend to.
He was firmly resolved to put an end to this condition of affairs; to tear the ever-rankling and festering barb from out the wound, let it cost what it might. How this could best be done he did not know as yet. But upon one point his mind was definitely made up; he owed it to Julie to render a repetition of such scenes impossible.
He left the studio and went into the city. He directed his steps to the hotel where the Russian countess was staying. To his amazement, he learned there that no one had ever heard of this Madame St.-Aubain, which was the name Rosenbusch had given him the preceding evening. The porter did, indeed, remember a person such as Jansen described; the lady spent the whole day with the countess no later than yesterday. But she was not stopping in the hotel, and he had not learned what her name was.
He would speak about it to the countess herself: could he see her for a moment? asked the sculptor.
The porter looked at his watch. It was only nine o'clock; He had orders to admit no one before eleven.
So there was nothing left for him but to be patient, hard as it was.
Wandering about without any definite plan, his heart led him to where Julie lived. But, the moment he saw the house in the distance, he turned back. It was impossible for him to look her in the face again until he could say to her: "It is all over; you have nothing more to fear from my past; the spectre has been sent back among the dead."
He went into the Pinakothek, where at this time of the year and day the large, unheated halls stand empty. He stretched himself on the sofa that stands in the centre of the immense room, and looked over the walls with half closed eyes. The power and warmth of life of these noble pictures acted, without his knowing it, upon his spirits, and his mood continued to grow quieter and more gentle, until at last he fell fast asleep, his hat pushed down so low over his eyes that the attendants and the few visitors took him for an exceedingly studious painter, who made use of his hat-brim to protect him from the reflection of the light from above.